Finding Destiny
by jwainwright24
Summary: This is my very first shot at writing a story. I wrote this for my creative writing 101 class.


Finding Destiny

By: Janica Wainwright

How can you be sure that the one that you want is the one that you are destined to be with? The person who you love is the right person you are supposed to spend the rest of your life with? They say that there is a soul mate out there for everyone, but is that really true? Or are there people who are just destined to be alone?

Like old lady Jennings down the street. She lives there alone; just her and her cats. When I was younger I remember running down the street corner and just sitting there and watching her. I would always feel sorry for her because she had no one to love or love her; nobody to talk to or eat with or cuddle up and watch movies with. It sickened me to ever picture myself that way, old and alone. I remember my mother once telling me that "where there is love there is life." You see my mother loved quoting Gandhi. I don't know why, I guess for a guy who looked like Yoda he's pretty knowledgeable about these types of things. I never understood what she said until I saw Ms. Jennings for the first time. Without anyone to love her she looked like she was just going through the motions life and not really living it. Mother once told me that she was not always like that, the towns own ghost story. She was actually the town's social butterfly. But her husband died tragically in a car accident many years before I was born. Shorty after that she imminently confided herself within her house and never saw daylight again.

I guess Gandhi had something going with that, but then I think of my mother's life. She was the type that falls in love as often as possible. She loved and loved often. Some say that she didn't live either; always searching for her "true love". This got in the way of her actually living her life. But what really is true love? Is there such a thing? Or is it just an idea in which Disney and Hollywood plant into girls head as often as possible that gives them unrealistic views on love, man, and happily ever after. When I was little she used to tell me that God has made someone special just for you. That special person was created just for your needs and desires; yet, it is your job to go out there and look for him. Do not expect him to show up on your door step randomly with a bouquet of a dozen red roses ready to sweep you off your feet. I would ask her how I would go about finding my "true love" and she said: "Go out there into the world and open your heart up for everyone to see. Love and love often, kiss passionately and love endlessly. And when the right guy –the one that you were destined to be with—come along you will just know by the way that you feel."

"How would I know what that feeling would be like?"

"Close your eyes and start spinning really, really fast. What do you feel?"

I did as she said and when I got done I promptly told here everything that I felt

"I feel like I'm going to faint. And my stomach feels funny, like it's in knots or something."

"That is what being in love feels like, sweetie. You are very dizzy, light headed in a way. You can't eat because your stomach is always in knots and you won't able to sleep because for once reality is so much better than dreaming."

"Is that what you felt when you meant my father?"

My father was a touchy subject with my mom. We really did not talk about him or his existence. For all I know I didn't have one. Well in a way I didn't. My mother raised me all by herself; with no help from no one, not even grams. When his existence was brought up my mother had a funny way of changing the subject to how school was or what I did that day.

My mother died when I was six. Some say it was from a heart attack brought on by too much stress. I had my own theory on how she died-too many broken hearts and lost loves. From then on I lived with Gram. Gram was very different from my mother. It's hard to believe that my free spirited mother who dreamed finding love and happiness grow up in the same house as Gram, under the same rules. You see Gram was very strict, homework must be done right after school, no junk food, only thirty minutes of television a day, bed by 7:30 every night even on weekends, and absolutely no boys anywhere near the house. Don't get me wrong I loved my grandmother, but sometimes I think that she was a little too strict.

His name was Tommy; tall, tousled brownish red hair that flowed in the wind like wheat in a soft summer breeze, three years my senior, and basically gorgeous all around. Everything about him was electrifying. Every kiss, touch, smell, and taste left me intoxicated and breathless. The love that we shared was pure and true. Many people would disagree that we were in fact in love and that we were too young to feel such complex emotions. I just laugh at them and say you love with your heart not your head. Being in love is a feeling and not meant to be seen with the eyes. There is no age limit where a person can feel. You feel every day. Children tell their parents that they love them every day. It's the same thing. Just with someone that is not related to you. If you're telling me that I'm too young to love someone go tell your children to stop telling you that they love you because they are too young and immature to feel something so "complex". Tommy always loved when I talked like that. He would tell me when I speak that I'm years older than I am actually am, always too wise for my age. You see it would feel like our passion for each other was a crime, our love was the weapon. Always felt like I was at war defending how we feel and if it's real.

"I told you there were no boys allowed in this house" Gram yelled at the top of her lungs when she caught Tommy on top on me in the living room. "You are not old enough to date".

"Gram, I'm fourteen and plus I love him".

"You do not know the first thing about love, young lady!" she snapped back. That's when I noticed that Tommy was not by my side anymore but out the door and probley halfway to his house by now. As I started to run after him she grabbed me by my arm. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

"I'm going after him Gram."

"You are not going anywhere but to your room Anna Elizabeth!"

"But I love him! You know nothing about love!"

"_Love_? You think that I don't know about love? You sound more like your mother with every passing day. Your mother believed in love and everything that it stood for. Do you know what love got her?" I shook my head no as she continued on this pointless rant. "Nothing! No education, she dropped out of high school to follow a man ten years her senior half way across the country and promptly got knocked up. She would write me telling me about how Carlos, her, and you were going to be thing big happy family full of love. As soon as she had you Carlos, your father, spilt. And haven't been seen or heard from in years. Then after that your mother poisoned your mind with these fantasies of love and finding your soul mate. Love, it's done nothing for your mother and she knew that. She only hoped that you wouldn't see her fail you as a mother. Love is nothing but a foolish girl's dream. To love is to fail. I do not want to hear another word out of you about this or this boy that got you under his spell. Do you understand me?"

"You speak of love as if it's an unspeakable curse that should be avoided instead of embraced. Haven't you ever been in love? Didn't you love Grampop?

"That is none of your business. You are too young to understand and furthermore you know nothing about love to understand."

"But mom taught me that love have no age limit. Anyone can feel something, whether it strong or not. There is no such thing as being too young or too old."

"I said enough." And that was that conversation. The next day my bags were packed and I was shipped off to some boarding school half way across the country, punished for loving someone what a cliché.

That was five years ago and I haven't seen Tommy since. Today I'm heading to college, the University of Maryland. Gram wanted me to attend an all girl's college but I told her that since she is not paying for it she has no say in where I go. I was walking to my dorm when I spotted him across the courtyard. Tall, tousled brownish red hair that flowed in the wind like wheat in a soft summer breeze, and gorgeous all around. Deep down I felt that I already known him for a lifetime. Familiar and safe. At that very moment one of my mother's memories flooded my mind.

"Anna, open you heart, love and love often. No one is destined to be alone."

That is when it hit me. It was Tommy, the boy that I once proclaimed my love to so long ago. Though I have dated in the past, no boy had ever made me feel so alive like Tommy once did. I couldn't give another guy my heart because a part of it was still left with Tommy. And here fate has dealt me him once again, so we can rekindle the love that we once shared five years back. I for one am not going to ignore fate or the boy that I'm destined to be with. As I walked towards where he was sitting I saw a skinny bleached blonde, eyes blue as the sea, run up to him and kiss him. Kiss him like we once kissed. Embraced him, looked into him eyes the same exact way I did so long ago. Why oh why can fate be so cruel? Once I was too young and now he has found another? Am I supposed to be with him or not? I turned around and headed towards my dorm.

That night I looked out of my window, as I did when I was a child, and looked to the moon so full and the sky shimmering with billions of stars. I looked for that one star that was descending from the heavens and made one final wish. I wished that one day Tommy would remember me and the loved that we shared when the days were long and the nights were short and we had no cares in the world. At that moment I heard a knock on the door. I ran to it and with hopes that god or whoever was up there in the sky listening would hear my wish. As I opened to door, I caught a whiff of a strange but familiar smell. Looking up it was Tommy standing there in the flesh, right in front of me, standing there with that lovable grin that I adore so much.

"Hey, Anna…umm I thought that I saw you in the courtyards earlier… and I you know just wanted to welcome you to the…college. Welcome!"

At that moment I felt my body walk vigorously towards him and wrap my arms around him and kissed him. Mentally I know that he is no longer mine, that he has a girlfriend that he most likely loves dearly. However, physically it is like we have never parted. The way that my body was intertwined into his, felt like it did oh so many years ago, right. And that gives me hope for the future.

"I…uh…sort of have…"

"…a girlfriend. I know I saw you too. I just wanted to see what it would be like to kiss you one last time. See you around. And thanks for the welcome." I whispered quietly knowing that from that night on I would never see, or want to see for that matter, Tommy Parker again.

Looking back on the events that happened throughout my life I cannot say that I'm much different from Ms Jennings; for we both have loved and lost. She found the love of her life and stuck by him till the end. I, on the other hand, chased after what, or who really, I envisioned my true love to be. Most of my life I was taught how I should go out and find this concept of love. My mother, god rest her soul, believed I needed a man to truly be loved. My grandmother didn't think that I was old enough to comprehend what it truly means to love. But I now realize that they both were right, in a way. Love, is a complex feeling that shouldn't be shared alone. However, you do not need a partner to express it. And age does play an apart in it. Honestly I think that we are all too young to fully understand the complexity of this feel. It takes years upon years to develop feeling for a person and really understand what it means to love someone and appreciate the love that you share. Loving someone or finding love doesn't make you who you are or a better person at. It just makes you human. It is just one of many feelings that we as humans are capable of having. I can say though that I'm no longer afraid or get sickened by being alone. I know that there are many more guys out there and when the time is right the perfect guy for my will come along. But in the meantime I'm perfectly content with who I am right now.


End file.
